Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Hands-on Preview

For plenty of in-game footage of the multiplayer mode in action, head over to our Rainbow Six Vegas 2 video preview, where Philippe Therien from Ubisoft Montreal talks about Vegas 2’s key features.

We loved Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas so much so that our esteemed leader Tom gave it nine-out-of-10 when it was released back in December 2006. But since then the first-person military shooter bar has very much been raised. You know what I’m talking about: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

And so, with the bar raised, Ubisoft Montreal has quite a job on its hands developing a sequel to the acclaimed Vegas that’s not only a step forward for the series, but stands out as a shining light for the genre. With this in mind, we sprinted (that’ll make sense later) towards Ubisoft HQ to get some serious hands-on time with Rainbow Six Vegas 2’s multiplayer, and found out what the score is.

On the face of it Ubisoft Montreal has developed Vegas 2 very quickly. Assuming the game doesn’t slip, we’re looking at a turnaround under a year-and-a-half. Now, this sparks a couple of questions. One: how did they manage it? And two: is it a proper sequel or more like a director’s cut?

The answer to the first question lies with the Unreal Engine 3, which the team used to build the first Vegas game and this one. With the original Vegas the team spent a lot of time getting to grips with the engine. Now, with that under its belt, the team was able to concentrate on new features and gameplay mechanics rather than get bogged down worrying about whether the game would work. Hence the shorter development time.

The answer to the second question is more subjective. Speaking to VideoGamer.com in an interview you can view elsewhere on the site, designer Philippe Therien told us that there is a feeling that Vegas 2 is Vegas: The Director’s Cut, or the game the team always wanted to make. So now we’ve got a multiplayer mode that has graphics on par with the single-player game. We’ve got a new sprint (left bumper on the Xbox 360 pad), better AI, two-player coop and a “more interesting story” which takes in some varied locales – the Nevada desert, Vegas convention centre, Indoor Rex Centre, a Strip Club and some of the seedier parts of town to name a few.

Speaking of the story, Rainbow team leader Logan Keller has been replaced as lead character by Bishop, a soldier who can be played male or female and with your own face through the PlayStation Eye or the Xbox LIVE Vision Camera. Throughout the story you’ll get a lot of explanation as to where Bishop fits in with the Rainbow team hierarchy, but the dev team is keeping quiet on this at the moment. It’s part prequel, part sequel and also runs concurrently with the original Vegas time line (while Logan was in Mexico, Bishop’s team was still in Vegas). Vegas 2 will also mark the end of the series’ time in Vegas and wrap up the story. “This will really be the end of the Vegas storyline this time” Philippe said. Here’s hoping we actually get a proper ending this time.

According to Philippe, some of the guys who worked on Assassin’s Creed, also a Ubisoft Montreal game, popped their heads around the wall and gave a helping hand with the presentation side of things. The AI, too, has been improved. Philippe talked about leapfrogging, where one enemy will take cover and the other will provide covering fire. The cover system, one of Rainbow Six’s unique features, has undergone somewhat of an overhaul. The type of cover is all important – a wall or a solid object will provide the best cover, and conversely a chair or table will be pretty much useless. The AI knows this, and will try and find better cover when they’re getting shot through a wicker basket.

The team has also added some visual clues so that players know what kind of enemy they’re up against. For example, if you see a bad guy who’s wearing a ballistics mask, you know they’re wielding a shotgun, and so you won’t want to get up close and personal. Speaking of shotguns, they’re now twice as fast as in the original Vegas, and “very dangerous for the player”.

There’s been some other weapon tweaks. The light machine gun has a rate of penetration that’s “insane” and can “probably shoot players through walls”. Again, the AI knows this, and will continue to shoot you if they have that gun and you sprint behind a wall.

Ah the sprint. Sprinting doesn’t last very long, only a few seconds and is really only useful for going from one area of cover to another. You can shoot, but your aiming will be all over the place. It’s a nice addition, but isn’t going to set the world on fire.

Perhaps the biggest change is the revamped co-op. Ubisoft’s decision to drop the co-op from four-players to two has drawn some criticism from battle-hardened Vegas fans, who feel the gameplay will be “dumbed down” as a result (the dev team has implemented a casual mode because they felt many people were threatened by the original Rainbow Six – but has made the realistic mode even harder). We’ll have to wait until we get our hands-on the main campaign, but let’s just say at this point we share those concerns. One good thing about it is you can join a mate who’s got a game in progress, with no need to start the level over. “It’s completely seamless” we were told.

Vegas 1 featured the PEC (Persistent Elite Creation) levelling up system in its multiplayer game modes. In Vegas 2 this has been taken into the campaign too, making it persistent across the entire game. So, if you play the single-player campaign, get Bishop to a bad-ass level, you can then take all those upgrades online, without having to start from scratch.

In-game, this is implemented via a small XP bar on the HUD. Like many MMOs, at early levels you level up quickly, but things soon slow down. Linked to this is the new ACES system, which rewards players for skilful and tactical play. So you’ll get rewarded for sniper head shots, flanking, throwing flash bangs and the like, as opposed to simply charging in and destroying everything in sight. The game will then give you access to new weapons based on the tactics you employ most in the game. For example, if you get quite handy with a sniper rifle, the game will recognise this and grant you better sniper rifles. All of this was in response to a feeling that players weren’t playing the original Rainbow Six tactically enough. Now you have an incentive.

All this talk is fine but we wanted to check it out for ourselves, and luckily we got the chance to do just that with a two-hour four VS four multiplayer session that really helped us get an idea of how Vegas 2 is shaping up. Before each match starts the game allows you to choose a class template from assault, recon, demo or sniper. This template gives you a load out which you can tweak if you fancy it. You can then choose your outfit from base equipment and items you’ve unlocked.

The game will come with 13 new maps and a number of new game modes. We played one of the, Demolition, a Counter Strike type game mode which sees one team assault and one team defend, on the Convention Centre map. Here one team needs to place the bomb (from a choice of two clearly marked areas), the other disarm it. The first thing you notice is that you do indeed level up very quickly. After one game I found myself upgraded to a Private second class, with access to new items – ballistic goggles, tactical helmet and a balaclava.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2’s multiplayer remains a slow-paced, considered affair, which lends itself to hardcore gamers despite the concerns of “dumbing down”. The emphasis here is on tactics and realism, and so it doesn’t take much for you to die. Because of this, you’ll always be worried about sticking your head out from behind cover (Vegas 2’s cover system works well – left trigger to get in cover, move left thumbstick to peek out). Compared with CoD4, it can feel like things are going at a snail’s pace, but then that’s what Rainbow Six is about. This isn’t run and gun. This is duck and cover. This is the thinking man’s shooter.

Demolition didn’t really do it for us. We had a much better time with the Team Leader mode on a paint ball style map. Here, one member of each team is the team leader. The aim is to get your team leader to the extraction point without getting killed. The twist is that while the team leader is alive, your team mates can re-spawn. But if he dies, that’s it – no more re-spawns. This led to some caged and very tactical matches. Add to this the fact that only the team leaders can see each other, and you’ve got the potential for some really satisfying, communication-led match-ups.

By the end of our second match we had already levelled up to Private first class, and opened up some more gear, including a Raid BDV, cargo pants and a long sleeve shirt (woo!), as well as a 10G Microsoft Achievement. We moved on to another game mode, Total Conquest, this time on the Villa map (huge, posh mansion house – lots of glass to break). The aim of the game here was to capture and hold all the satellite transmitters for the duration of a countdown. This was the poorest game mode of the lot, although we can see it being a lot more fun with more communication between team mates. It was during this game mode that we levelled up again to the Specialist rank, opening up the DPM Desert Camo, Cadpat camo and Russion camo gear (double woo!).

Although we can’t be sure about the whole game, one thing we can say about the multiplayer with a degree of authority is that this is no revolution. Fans of Vegas will feel instantly at home with the sequel. Sure the graphics have been improved somewhat (feel a little bit dated, still not as impressive as CoD4) and Ubisoft Montreal has implemented some subtle but useful gameplay tweaks which will please fans (the jury’ still out on two-player co-op). But does it do enough to draw newcomers to the series? We fear not. Will its PEC system prize away the many millions of online gamers who have contributed to make Activision’s shooter the number one played game (on and off) on Xbox LIVE? Probably not. The bar has well and truly been raised.

It’s quite possible that the CoD4 comparisons will be inconsequential. We’d very much hope that both games can co-exist in a happy-happy-joy-joy military FPS utopia. Perhaps the real issue lies elsewhere. At the top of the preview we said Ubisoft has quite a job on its hands moving the series and the genre forward. From what we’ve seen, Vegas 2 won’t do either of these things to any great extent. A true sequel? Perhaps not. But we still expect Vegas 2 to be one of the better first-person shooter

Don’t forget to check out our Rainbow Six Vegas 2 video preview for plenty of in-game footage.s released this year.